


in fivefold

by fishycorvid



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Banter, Canon Compliant, Don't Worry About It, F/M, Fluff, Healthy friendship, Implied Sexual Content, Minor Angst, Minor canon divergence, Rated M for Mbetter Safe Than Sorry, Two-parter, but like only if you squint, five things, healthy relationship, i guarantee you can handle it, like it's barely there, throughout the seasons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 16:19:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15222974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: a story in ten parts. one through five. five through one.(alternatively, to make a short story very, very long, and Jake and Amy have been falling in love for nearly a decade.)





	in fivefold

**Author's Note:**

> anyways, this is the monster fic. yes, it's only halfway done! i don't really know what else to say, just that really, truly, from the bottom of my heart: i hope you enjoy this.

i. Being rivals with Detective Santiago is, quite frankly, a headache.  


He hadn’t expected it initially. When she walked in through the door, Jake instantly pegged her a do-gooder, a suck-up, an intelligent but ultimately submissive follower. He figured she would be part of the team, yes, and she’d add to them, yes, but would, in the end, be forgettable, as new faces so often are.

But she’s not.

Every word she speaks and action she takes demands to be noticed. Not for some vain need for attention but because it’s just her nature to be unforgettable, undefinable, unignorable (as much as sometimes he might wish she was). _Demands_ to be noticed. Fights him every step of the way. Goes toe to toe with him on every case, in every conversation, in every tiny way, during every second of every day. He looks up from his desk and she’s already gazing back at him, chin tilted up, this challenging light in her eyes that takes him back every time he registers it. There’s fire there; a need to prove herself, an ambition. It burns in her, and he sees it every time he looks at her or talks to her. She straightens up when he walks near her, a sharp, calculating, fiery smile already curling at the edges of her lips.

And yet-- somehow, _somehow_ , Jake relishes the bitter fights and disagreements with his coworker, the sting of a good barb or the satisfaction of watching Amy’s mind stutter for a second. The glow of a minuscule victory sitting high in his chest. Even when he loses, he has to roll his eyes in begrudging amusement at her dumb little victory dance that she thinks he doesn’t see, but of course he does. He watches her walk away, a bounce in her step.

They grate on each other, especially in the beginning. They’re diametrically opposed in seemingly every possible way: in personality, in organization, in petty values, in the way they attack a problem. And so they attack each other instead.

After their disastrous first case together (they bickered so much that the perp somehow committed another _murder_ completely unnoticed by both of them, and Jake ended up crashing a squad car in a desperate bid to catch the guy. In the end, Amy scaled a ten-foot-wall in a matter of seconds, vaulted over the edge, and tackled the murderer. Jake maintained it wasn’t as cool as it sounded, but the jealousy in his eyes was so intense it was practically physically manifesting whenever he talked about it), Terry, as their sergeant, had made an executive decision to never make them work together again, _ever_ , under pain of death, despite them being desk partners.

Unfortunately for Terry, the two childish idiots throwing paper clips at each other from across their desks are some of the most brilliant detectives he’s ever had the displeasure of managing.

“Peralta, Santiago,” he says one morning in a briefing, “you’re working the Colombo murder.” As if on cue, both detectives break out into groans, already shooting disgusted glares at each other from across the room.

“Sarge!” Jake protests almost as soon as the other man gets the last word out. “You can’t partner me with Santiago. Don’t you remember--”

Terry sighs loudly. _“Yes,_ Peralta, I _do_ remember the catastrophe that was your first and last case with Detective Santiago. But you do have to learn to work with your _partner_. Come on, Jake.” He pins him down with a sharp stare, and Jake relents, giving Amy one last annoyed glance, which she returns.

 _Well, at least we agree on something,_ Jake thinks drily.

In fact, as Amy states to him baldly later that night as they squeeze into a squad car together, “Neither of us want to be here,” and he nods emphatically.

“Yeah. You’re gross,” he agrees immediately, and she huffs, eyes narrowing instantly.

“Who are you calling gross? At least I don’t subsist mainly off orange soda and gushers,” she retorts, crossing her arms defensively.

Jake laughs a little, shaking his head. “At least _I_ don’t probably have an organization kink,” he shoots back, and Amy practically yelps, scooting as far away from him as she can until she’s pressed against the car door.

“We’re at work, Peralta!” she snaps, but he thinks maybe there’s a little bit of amusement in her scandalized, annoyed gaze. “And no I don’t.”

“What? I’m a detective. I _detect,”_ he chuckles, and she punches him in the arm just enough to hurt. “You’re so _mean_ , Santiago,” Jake whines, rubbing his shoulder.

Amy full-out laughs at that, and then looks surprised at herself, like she hadn’t meant for that to happen. “Yeah, but you like it,” she responds proudly, recovering fast.

“And _you_ think I’m funny,” he replies with an insufferably smug grin. His partner groans, banging her head against the steering wheel lightly.

“You’re the worst, Peralta.”

“No, _you_ are.”

“You are!”

“You are!”

“No, _y_ \-- God, it’s like arguing with a toddler,” she grumbles defeatedly.

“Yeah,” Jake smirks. “‘Cause the toddler always _wins_.”

Amy sighs loudly and opens her mouth to reply to his blatant logical fallacies, but then there’s activity across the street, so Jake is left feeling like he’s absolutely destroyed Amy Santiago in this argument and Amy is left feeling vaguely disappointed, like maybe she was, in some odd way, enjoying clashing just as much as he was.

Either way, they take down the murderer in a matter of minutes and come back to a whole round of accolades that cements them as the Nine-Nine Dream Team, thus forcing them into a seemingly eternal cycle of case after case after case, all of which, of course, surveyed by a smugly victorious Terry Jeffords. Both claim that these are the darkest hours of their careers, nay, their _lives_ , but no one misses the matching proud smiles and loud laughter that rings around the precinct these days, nor do they miss the exasperated fondness the two detectives seem to mirror in each other’s eyes. Even if all that hides under a thin veneer of name-calling and brash arguments and a frankly annoying amount of yelling, it’s irrefutably _there_.

They’re rivals, yes; it’s a headache for everyone involved, yes.

But it’s _different_. In ways Jake can’t articulate yet.

ii. Being friends with Amy Santiago is also different.

As with most things related to his detective deskmate, he didn’t see it coming-- he wasn’t supposed to be friends with her, and it wasn’t supposed to be that recognizably changed. Besides, they slipped into it-- it was like a pattern, really, except somehow in their oscillations of argument and grudging collaboration and name-calling it turned into playful bickering, enthusiastic (albeit turbulent) teamwork, and teasing laced with giggles that kind of embarrass both of them, but they can’t bring themselves to care.

He goes driving with her, sometimes, after he finally wins their ridiculous bet. He gets off work earlier than she does one evening around a week after its end, drives to her apartment in his so-called date magnet, and waits for her to come home. She finds him sitting cross-legged on her doorstep with an almost innocently bright smile curling his lips.

“What do you want, Peralta?” Amy asks, crossing her arms and leaning against her doorframe. Jake wonders why she doesn’t seem surprised at all that he’s here, unprompted, at 6:27 PM on a Thursday.

He holds up his keys, spinning them around his pointer finger, and he can practically sense her rolling her eyes internally if not externally. “Wanna go driving? I know you never learned to do stick.”

She groans. “Jake, if you’re just going to use this as an excuse to lord it over me that you know something I don’t---”

“Amy,” Jake laughs, pushing himself to his feet, “you know I was already gonna do that anyways. If you don’t want to drive, it’s fine.” He tosses her the keys, which she catches effortlessly and throws right back at him with unnecessary force. Much to her clear annoyance, he catches them with ease and twirls them around his finger again. “Okay, so I’m driving,” he says smugly, and Amy groans defeatedly even though it’s not like she _wanted_ to be the driver here, it’s just a groan on principle, and together they walk down the stairs to where his slowly-breaking-down car awaits them both.

It becomes a _thing_ , sort of. The two of them drive through the city and out into the countryside, through almost-deserted highways and semi-wilderness, always in the evening. They pack snacks (Jake with his nuts and orange soda, Amy with her bottled water and assorted fruit), and he laughs at her disgust in his food choices as they clank and rumble down the highway, Jake’s mixtapes that he made in the 90’s blasting out of his crappy speakers.

They don’t talk about it, really, because they don’t need to; they’ll just show up on each other’s doorsteps and then they’ll just... go. A lot of things feel that way with them-- everything that matters hums under the surface, a murmur of an engine driving them both in the background, just distant enough for them to pretend it doesn’t matter.

One night, after a long case (one of so, so many), after a day straight of working and staying at the precinct with each other, he finds himself on her doorstep again, keys stretched out.

“I just got home, Peralta,” Amy says blearily, arms crossed when she opens the door for him, and he shrugs. “You’re way too tired to be driving anyways.”

He grins. “I’ll be safe, Santiago. I always am.” She laughs at that, and though she keeps her arms crossed over her chest, she’s edging halfway out the door. “Plus, I’ve got you to keep me in line,” he calls over his shoulder on the way down the stairs, and he can feel the smile on her face, even with his back turned to her.

They work together now, even with their underlying rivalry, in ways that don’t make sense to anyone. Looking at either of them individually, even Captain Holt himself wouldn’t have thought they’d make good partners, much less good friends, but together, somehow, it works: nights in Jake’s apartment, eating surprisingly delicious home-cooked meals and watching late night television; days spent at Amy’s, ordering takeout and playing board games she hasn’t pulled out of her closet in years and sitting on her couch together just talking; evenings at Shaw’s with the squad, making dumb bets and getting drunk like they’re still in their twenties and badly singing karaoke.

(One time, at the cajoling and bargaining of the whole squad, they sang a duet: “Anything You Can Do” from Annie Get Your Gun. Gina recorded it and kept it for blackmail purposes. Sometimes, she considers posting it on her Twitter, but then she watches it again, all shitty audio quality and bursts of laughter halfway through lyrics, and thinks better of it.)

There’s this understanding between them that even when they argue and outdo and curse at each other, it’s all okay. They’re friends. It’s new. It’s not like any friend Jake’s had before, and he thinks he’s happy about that.

And that’s not even getting _into_ the way he feels sometimes when she grins at him during door duty, or gleefully reads a perp their rights, or her eyes sparkle with amusement whenever he says something particularly dumb.

But they’re _friends_.

Which is exactly what he thinks and even insists up until Charles plants doubts in his head (why did he choose now to listen to Charles?), until Teddy asks her out at the tactical village and his chest knots up, until he asks her about her date later that night at Shaw’s and her eyes sparkle in a way that he’s used to seeing reserved for his awful jokes when she says _it went really well, better than any date has been for me for a while,_ until his heart crawls into his throat and his ribs feel like they’re going to cave in around his lungs.

Either way, it’s kind of an accident when he tells Rosa— not a premeditated thing, definitely; instead something borne out of the end of one long week in a string of long weeks where they’re all at Shaw’s (it’s beginning to feel like they’re always at Shaw’s, the warm-tinted buzz of alcohol at least partly covering the ever-present murmur of exhaustion below the surface). Amy is playing Gina at pool and losing terrifically (“I’m not _that_ drunk,” she insists, before failing to hit even the white ball), but miraculously she manages to net one of her striped balls and, being Amy, immediately launches into an energetic victory dance, all flailing arms and a wide beaming smile that doesn’t show itself too much but is, somehow, becoming more frequent.

“Cute,” Jake slurs before he can so much as even try to filter himself, tipping his bottle in his coworker’s general direction. A sort of quiet moment: an intoxicated Jake watching Amy dance with a languid half-grin curling his mouth at the ends, Rosa next to him watching him watch her.

Rosa, perched on the stool by his side, wrinkles her nose and takes a long swig her whiskey before clearing her throat and slamming the glass back down on the table with a clatter. “Why don’t you two just bang already?”

Jake yelps a little too loud, and Rosa elbows him hard in the stomach to shut up. “I don’t want to _b—_ and honestly, Diaz, I can’t believe you’d—“ he swears under his breath and lowers his voice just a little. “Listen, it’s not just— not like that, okay? It’s just…” He struggles for some suitable word to convey this tangle of emotions in the pit of his stomach and fails to find it. “Not.”

She hums gruffly at that and takes another drink. “Feelings.”

He snorts, dry and harsh, raising his beer with an ironic quirk of the eyebrow. “Feelings.” They clink drinks together, and when he takes a swig, it doesn’t burn as much as he had hoped.

Plenty of people bring it up subtly (Charles is not among the aforementioned subtle people, but Jake’s gotten very good at ignoring him when it comes to anything relationship-related). Even Holt tries once, calling him into his office while Amy’s out working a case.

“You and Santiago work well together as a team,” the captain begins cautiously after Jake closes the door, and then pauses, unsure of how to proceed. Jake sighs and rakes fingers through too-long curly hair.

“All due respect, captain, but please stay out of my personal life.”

“Gladly,” Holt mutters. “However, Peralta, while I support you forming meaningful adult bonds with others, I do not support a bond that will damage the dynamics of the precinct or your detective partnership. Be sure that you keep our squad intact.”

“Amy and I are friends, Captain. I don’t endanger my friendships, you know that.” He shoves his hands deep into his pockets, mouth pulling into a straight line. He forces himself to meet Holt’s eyes.

His captain nods appraisingly, holding his gaze for a beat. “I know, detective. I value that aspect of your personality. Be sure that the two of you continue your teamwork. Even if the posturing and arguments I deal with on a daily basis from both of you must... continue as well.”

Jake grins tentatively, straightening up. “Would you say Amy does more posturing and arguing than, say, me? Are you, mayhaps, proud of my work-related conduct, captain?”

The older man sighs, folding his hands together precisely. “Get out of my office, Peralta.”

“I’m taking that as a yes, sir!” he sing-songs cockily on his way out, and Holt buries his head in his hands.

And, sure, all Jake’s confidence and general playfulness is a weak facade, but what really matters is that no one is aware of it.

But then comes the mess in the parking lot outside the precinct, and Amy’s torn-apart eyes as he ducks out and away, into the general shadows of Brooklyn. Over those next months, he wields a gun far more liberally. The lines and shadows under his eyes grow, darken, intensify. The skin under his fingernails gets dirty. His knuckles are scraped raw. And the only thing pulling him through it are disjointed memories of laughing with a group of people in a golden-lit bar, playfully fighting with a dark-haired woman over coffee and computers, reporting to a captain each morning, tying his tie in front of a dirty mirror every morning _(this a team,_ he remembers). He knows it’s not too far away; a couple months and a few miles at most, but it feels like years, like worlds.

At any rate, he does manage to drag himself back, hair a little too long for his taste and a little more blood on his hands than he’d thought he’d have, even after several months infiltrating a crime family. Amy greets him with a far-off smile, and Jake knows instantly, _instantly_ , that they’re still friends, no more and no less, and, somehow, he feels a glow of relief warming his chest.

Because they _work_ together, in so many more ways than one, and he’s happy to take down criminals with her and watch her hit the center of the target over and over when they practice their shooting accuracy and sit on her couch eating takeout and cook for her when they get back from a particularly rough stakeout and drive through the semi-wilderness of New York with her.

And it’s okay.

Besides, he meets Sophia Perez soon enough, and he loves her, he really does; Amy is his friend, anyways, even if they don’t have time to go driving together anymore, and she smiles at him over beer (they drink different brands and heckle each other relentlessly about the better one) when he describes their dates, at least until the Maple Drip Inn and she confesses to being madly in love with him (read: crushed on him at one point, presumably in the past). After that, Sophia looks at him funny. And when he impulsively tells her he loves her, she sighs and won’t meet his gaze.

Sophia Perez breaks up with him, and he drinks with his coworkers until two in the morning, at which point Amy hails a cab for both of them and she falls down on her couch while he collapses on her rug. It’s not okay, none of it, and it’s especially not okay when he wakes up to painfully bright sunlight streaming in through her living room window and a killer hangover, and Amy’s dark hair, freed from its ponytail at some point during the night, tickling his nose.

He squints into the light, gets up, and tries to go about his day normally.

Admittedly, Jake’s a mess for a while after that, constantly checking his phone with trembling hands, hoping and waiting for a text that never comes. Eventually, though, he gives up on waiting for nothing and sitting home alone in the dark.

Instead, he shows up at Amy’s apartment at exactly 9:47 PM on a Saturday (he knows she’ll be there; mostly she goes out on Fridays unless she gets invited by Kelly, which is not a frequent occurrence because Kelly also goes out on Fridays, even if not with Amy. He doesn’t know why he knows this, just that he does). She looks almost surprised to see him.

“What’s going on, Jake?” She’s wearing basketball shorts (stolen from and never returned to her oldest brother when he went off to college) and an oversized red sweatshirt and a bemused expression and for some reason it steals away Jake’s breath, just for a moment.

He swallows. “I was wondering if--” words stick to the insides of his throat; he holds out his keys instead. “Wanna go out driving?”

A hesitant smile. “Sure, Peralta.” She disappears into her apartment for a second, and he leans against the doorframe. When she reappears, she’s holding a tupperware of trail mix and fruit, all compartmentalized, and two bottles of water (she knows he won’t drink it, but the fun is in arguing about it).

“You had it pre-packed?” Jake asks quietly, and he can’t describe why his lips are curling at the edges, or why when she flushes a little he does too.

Amy recovers quickly, though, breezing past him and briskly saying, “Of course, Jacob-- I’m a _Santiago,”_ and he laughs louder maybe than intended, following her down the stairs at a gallop.

That night, they don’t get back until almost dawn, and can’t bring themselves to care. They’ve been inching closer to each other, have been since they met, and now, finally, they’re face to face.

A few weeks later, he finds himself clumsily kissing her in a restaurant, pinned back against a tree, in the evidence locker, her lips insistent and fiery against his, and he is happy to follow her wherever she leads.

iii. It’s not official that he’s dating Amy Santiago, at least not in the beginning.

It’s light and breezy in the beginning (he kind of thinks, _hey, I actually sorta want to come home to you each night and get ready for work next to you each morning and try to teach you to make dinner and tease you when you burn it but not in a mean way, I want to watch you do the daily crossword even if you don’t finish it because you’re convinced seven across is wrong, I want to fall asleep with you on my shitty mattress,_ but he ends up agreeing to _light and breezy_ because _light and breezy_ is better than nothing by a long shot, and like it or not, he’ll take anything she gives him).

But they do agree to a date night (though Amy, of course, prohibits the word “date” from the discussion) in the end, and he leaves the precinct early that night to get ready, just as the streetlights flicker to life.

She follows him out, a half-grin on her face, and when he turns to ask if she’s leaving, too, she drags him by the lapel of his leather jacket back into an alleyway.

Jake laughs wildly, bemused, and Amy looks at him for a moment with dark, daring eyes before lunging forward and devouring his laugh in a long kiss, all heat and hands, untucking the edges of his flannel to skim her hands along his sides, up to his ribs. He shudders into her touch and lets her press him back against the brick outer wall of the precinct, just out of the light of the streetlamp, moving his hand up to rake through her hair as the other one skims along her hip, pulling her closer (and he’s always trying to get closer to her, always), and she lets out a choked sigh that he swallows up greedily.

After a long moment, she pulls back a few inches, face flushed and lips red. She scans his face, a grin pulling at the edges of her lips and showing teeth, and her fingers hook around his belt loops.

Her smug smile widens, if even possible, when his breath hitches noticeably, and she leans up to whisper into his ear, “See you tonight, Peralta,” and walks away casually with a haughty toss of her head, hands going up to fix her ponytail.

“You’re gonna make it awfully hard not to break a rule if you keep pulling stuff like that, Santiago,” he calls after her, to remind himself as much as to remind her. She shoots him a glare, quickens her pace, and doesn’t spare him another look.

 _God, I’m so screwed,_ he thinks, resting his head back against the bricks, but he’s smiling.

They break a rule, surprising absolutely neither of them.

Even in the afterglow, though, he almost expects her to roll away, taking her warmth and awkwardness and soft limbs away from him (they broke a _rule),_ and he definitely expects to pay for their general deviance (listen, okay, when Amy Santiago starts running her hand up your thigh from under the table at a restaurant, nails scratching lightly at your skin through your trousers, and she keeps looking up at you from lidded, dark eyes, and you’ve wanted this for around, say, two whole years, you’re not going to say _no_ ).

But she doesn’t roll away. Instead, she curls closer, head finding a place on his chest, hand skimming over his waist and coming to rest on his hipbone. Inadvertently, he lets out a relieved breath and wraps his arms around her and buries his nose in her hair and doesn’t say a word.

Surprisingly, Jake sleeps easily that night.

After the mess with Dozerman and the Vulture and Holt’s victorious return from the depths of hell (better known as the Public Relations office of the NYPD), Jake and Amy settle into something almost shockingly normal. Their coworkers give them shit for being together, especially Gina, who constantly insults them and their sex life (which is stupid good, by the way), and Charles, who pumps up them and their sex life to the point where it’s honestly more disturbing than anything else.

“Hey Santiago,” Gina calls from across the bullpen as they leave together, “want some sex tips before you go? Maybe if you’re really lucky, tonight’s the first night you get to second base with anybody!” Jake glares at her and opens his mouth to tell her to lay off, because seriously, there’s a point where playful heckling tips over into harassment and unprofessionalism, and Gina is the queen of seeing that point and laughing in its face.

But before he can say anything, Charles gets to his feet, puffs out his chest, and says, “I’ll have you know, Gina, that Jake and Amy have _incredibly_ good sex. In fact, you should be _jealous_ of their raw chemistry and sexuality and aspire to their level of pure _connection_.”

Jake grimaces and Amy physically gags.

Luckily or maybe unluckily, that exact moment is when Holt steps out of his office, plants his feet on the linoleum, and booms, “Anybody talking about detectives Peralta and Santiago and the amount and/or quality of sexual relations they may have is getting their jobs suspended until further notice,” and Gina and Charles sit down with a huff while Jake and Amy scurry to the safety of the elevator.

But somehow, despite the sheer amount of speculation and sabotage, they manage to make it to the one-month mark, and then the two-month, and then the three, and on and on and on.

They still go driving, sometimes, but their work lives are only getting busier-- Amy’s been gearing up to take the sergeant’s exam ever since she got promoted to detective _(there’s one in just two years, Jake!_ she reminds him excitedly once or twice a week, or whenever he whinily asks why she wants to work overtime again), and both Terry and Holt are saddling them with harder and harder cases (though not often together anymore in lieu of the mattress incident).

It’s not till their six month anniversary that he manages to convince her to take the afternoon off, though he’d wanted the full day at first. Nevertheless, being Amy Santiago, she’d bartered her way down to just the late afternoon with some well-placed kisses and promises of orange soda. He still has to physically drag her out of work at 4:00 in the afternoon, though, much to the general enjoyment of Rosa, who had bet that he couldn’t do it in under five minutes (he makes it in five minutes and three seconds [according to Rosa’s phone timer] with much pushing and shoving, but Jake maintains for another six months that it’s bullshit before grumpily conceding and paying her twenty-five cents. Honestly, you’d think he’d bet his whole apartment on his girlfriend-removal skills).

“Where are we going?” she asks begrudgingly once he finally manages to get her out of the nine-nine and into the safety of his new car (he’s still kind of sad he had to sell his old one; it might’ve been rapidly breaking down and shitty, but its orange-soda-stained seats were ones that he was incredibly fond of).

Instead of asking, Jake cheerfully hums the tune to a commercial he saw when he was nine and swings himself into the driver’s seat.

“I don’t know why you’re still driving,” Amy complains as he cranks up the music, which is not Taylor Swift because he’s trying to be romantic and considerate and is thus playing the music she actually wants to hear, rather than “You Belong With Me” on repeat. “This thing isn’t stick, and I’m objectively a better driver than you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, babe,” Jake says, almost running a red before registering the stoplight and skidding to a halt about a quarter of the way into the intersection, and Amy groans, knocking the back of her head against her seat.

They fall into a comfortable silence, Amy eating trail mix from her purse (seriously, does she always carry a bag of the stuff around?) and humming along to the folksy music playing from the speakers while Jake tries to avoid crashing the car after looking at her for a little too long.

“Seriously, though,” Amy finally pipes up after they’re out of the city and speeding along the I-80 west, “Where are we going?”

Jake shrugs, grinning, and Amy smacks him on the shoulder. “Ow! What the hell was that for?” he yelps, taking a hand off the wheel to rub his aching arm.

Amy curses and wrenches the hand back to the wheel before leaning back in her seat, laughing. “Smug bastard,” she says, but her eyes are bright with amusement.

“Just because my dad is a slut doesn’t mean I’m a bastard,” he grumbles, smiling nonetheless, and his girlfriend shrugs, rolling down the window.

“Maybe not technically,” she says nonchalantly, but he doesn’t catch anything else she might’ve said, because Amy’s leaning out the window, dark brown hair whipping out behind her with her words, and she’s smiling into the wind, and the whole image is like a punch in the chest because the sun is perfectly behind her, turning the edges of her hair gold and transforming her into the kind of silhouette you see in paintings, not roaring down a highway in a second-class car on a Tuesday evening in mid-November.

Jacob Peralta, in that moment, knows only two things.

The first is _I’m in love with Amy Santiago, no-takebacks stylez._

The second is that he’s absolutely, completely, indisputably a goner in way too many ways to count.

He watches her like that, with her closed eyes and bright smile, up until he almost crashes into the car in front of him and Amy cusses him out for a full minute but he honestly couldn’t care less, not now, not tonight.

“Pay attention to the road, Jake,” she grumbles, finally winding down from her rant and gazing back out the window, and he fights the urge to do something really stupid, like say _I think I’m in love with you._

Instead, he says, “Yeah, yeah, I know, Ames,” and she softens a little at the nickname, reaching across the dashboard to squeeze his hand briefly, and though he doesn’t look at her (he wants to avoid getting his head bitten off again for being a distracted driver, thanks), he smiles.

Somehow, they drive for another five hours without another incident or near-crash, and it’s only when they drive past a sign screaming “Bemus Point” that Amy finally gasps in recognition and turns to him, eyes wide.

Mostly just to placate her but partially so he can fully take in her expression, Jake slows their car down to a stop for a moment (they’re all alone on the road, it being almost eleven at night in November on a weeknight, so at this point speed limits are arbitrary anyway). “Yeah,” he says quietly. “One of New York state’s best stargazing spots. You said you loved the stars as a kid but could never convince your family to just pick up and go looking for them except to go to the planetarium, and light pollution makes it nearly impossible to see them, so I googled it and apparently the best place is actually in Pennsylvania but I figured you wouldn’t want to drive that far in one night and there’s, like, nothing in New York except a few little areas, and I mean I don’t even know if you’d want to do this with me, or if you want to do it at all, but--”

“You’re rambling, babe,” Amy cuts in gently, eyes sparkling with affection and something more.

He smiles back at her gratefully. “So,” he waves his hand at the sign, “Bemus Point.”

“Thank you,” she says softly, and stretches over the center console to kiss him, long and languid and sweet, and he leans into it, smoothing a hand over her hair and resting on the back of her neck. She pulls back after a few minutes reluctantly, but with a satisfied smile pulling up at her mouth.

“I even packed blankets,” he proudly says. “I _planned ahead,”_ and Amy gasps and throws herself at him again (okay, she’s only half-joking at best), landing halfway over the center console, but they’re laughing too much for anything to really happen, Jake leaning his forehead against hers and giggling uncontrollably.

“You and your organization kink, babe, you’re gonna kill me.”

“Stop making fun of me,” Amy whines, tilting her head up to steal another brief kiss from him before withdrawing back to her seat, and Jake, still laughing, pulls away from the side of the road and starts driving again.

“Never, Ames,” he grins, and he doesn’t have to look to know she’s smiling.

They get to the stargazing spot relatively quickly after that, car humming to a stop in the corner of the dark lot. For a moment, they just gape at the stars through the windows.

“I didn’t know the night sky was supposed to be-- bright,” Jake breathes out, and Amy’s hand finds his, frozen on the steering wheel.

Amy nods in the semi-darkness. “I mean, I knew, but I didn’t think it would be like… this.”

Quietly, they get out of the car, grabbing blankets out of the back of the car and spreading them out on the hood and top of his car.

“Are you sure it’s okay to lie on top of this?” Amy asks skeptically, patting the metal of the car as if she’s sure it’ll break under the weight of her hand alone. He rolls his eyes and hops up, ignoring the dubious creak of the machine underneath him, and Amy sighs and follows, gingerly climbing up next to him.  


“If this car breaks, feel free to blame me,” he tells her magnanimously and she snorts as she settles herself down into the blankets.

“Trust me, I will,” she responds idly, curling closer to him and wrapping her arms around his torso. “Cold out,” she adds in a murmur, and he hums and pulls her closer so her head rests in the juncture between his neck and his shoulder. “You’re warm,” she mumbles against his skin, and he laughs, a chill going down his spine nonetheless.

“I’m happy to be hot for you,” he whispers into her ear, breath warm, and she chuckles quietly at the double entendre.

“Clever,” she mutters sarcastically, eyes still fixed on the stars, and he presses a kiss to the edge of her jaw with a grin.

“I always am, Ames,” he reminds her, and she smirks, and he leans over to kiss that, too.

They watch the stars with quiet, heavy eyes until they both get too cold to stay outside for any longer. But Jake still thinks about her hair brushing his neck, her body relaxing into his arms, the graze of her fingers against his flannel-covered chest, and he thinks about being in love with her. He almost voices it to her then, as they get back into the car, because he’s used to being stream-of-consciousness with her; it’s just the norm for them, but then he thinks, no. Because he knows Amy, and he knows she’ll want to wait a little longer, and above all he doesn’t want to freak her out by jumping something of this magnitude on her six months in. He wants this to be on her terms, and that’s not even _touching_ on the fact that he’s deeply emotionally articulate despite being a generally chatty person.

So rather than self-sabotaging, Jake pulls her to him before she buckles her seatbelt, and she’s chattering all the while but goes easily, perching on his lap and basically straddling him, eyes still fixed on the stars she can see through the windows.

“—Jake, did you know space actually isn’t that far away? The Karman Line, which is where space officially starts, is only 62-ish miles off the surface of the earth, so if we could drive straight up, we could technically be in space in a little over an hour, assuming you don’t speed, which of course you would--”

“Amy,” he tries to cut in, hands skimming up under her blouse and over her ribs, grazing over what must be lace, but even as she braces her hands against his shoulders, she doesn’t seem to be paying attention in the slightest.

“--and in the deepest parts of outer space, the temperature actually drops down to around -455 degrees Fahrenheit, which is within a couple degrees of actual absolute zero, which is how I’m feeling, by the way, it was way too cold out there, but we can never attain actual absolute zero, anyways; it’s just not physically possible for us--” she continues in a ramble, eyes lit up bright even in the dim light of his car.

 _“Amy,”_ he tries again, leaning up to kiss behind her ear, underneath her jaw, teeth grazing sensitive skin near her neck, and she shudders out a soft breath but keeps on talking, adjusting her weight on his lap idly, and he hisses softly, tensing.

“--but my God, Jake, the stars tonight, I swear the Milky Way was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and even though the moon was waxing I could see every star, every single one--” she cuts off into a sigh and dips her head to kiss him hungrily on the lips, and he lets out a strangled noise against her mouth, fingers working at the buttons on her blouse as she moves closer, ever closer.

 _“Ames,_ babe, you’re killing me,” he breathes hoarsely when she pulls away. “And as much as I appreciate your nerdiness— I really, _really_ love your nerdiness, trust me— I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me seduce you,” and she laughs, soft and low in a way that sends heat rushing through his whole body and settling in the pit of his stomach.

“Deal,” she whispers, grinning downright lasciviously, and he pulls her tighter against him.

As far as six-month anniversaries go, it’s probably Jake’s favorite so far.

(And anyway, Amy isn’t lying a few years down the road when she says she hasn’t had sex in the _back_ of a car. She has an image to keep up, you know.)

It’s not exactly _relaxing_ , dating Amy Santiago.

It’s intense in a way he’d never really expected from her, but then again, when wasn’t Amy constantly exceeding and absolutely destroying his expectations of her?

She keeps him on his toes, certainly, still shooting him challenging stares from across the bullpen, outdoing him in casework, of course, and playfully arguing with him about everything, tone caustic but smile bright. He still drinks her under the table at Shaw’s and watches people kick her ass at pool, watches her take down perps, watches her solve cases in seconds. She challenges him constantly, challenges him to better and stronger and smarter and kinder and a more loving person.

(When she tells him she loves him there on the cruise, he kind of thinks he might explode before he can say it back because the idea of someone like her loving _him_ \-- it almost devours him whole.)

On Sunday mornings, they play board games; Amy always picks Scrabble or some other word game, just so she can laugh when she scores 50 points on him while he struggles to get over 10, but not in a mean way. Plus, he always gets her back, pulling Monopoly or Yahtzee out from under his couch, because he’s got a crazy amount of luck with dice, even if his luck in almost everything else is generally shoddy. It’s another vague tradition of theirs, feeling semi-scripted, and they’re happy to lose to each other because it generally ends with them making out in Amy’s sun-soaked living room against her counter or on the rug or the couch, interspersed with stomach-aching laughter and throwing board game pieces at each other.

Sure, they work themselves to the bone at the precinct, but it’s worth it, especially because in the end he gets to come home to her each night and cook dinner for the both of them. One time, he tries to teach her how to make biscuits and she ends up getting flour all over her counter and her face and adds salt instead of sugar. It’s awful, definitely, and they’re kind of half-burned, but he eats one slathered with honey for her benefit and leans over the counter to kiss the flour off her lips. They order takeout too, of course, off the menus Amy has printed and painstakingly laminated (he points out a crinkle on the corner of the Chinese place’s menu a few months into their relationship and the look she gave him was downright murderous), and they steal food from each other and end up getting sauce all over their faces, but even Amy can’t even bring herself to care. Even when they come home late, they go to bed curled together under their covers, and even through the depths of sleep, Amy finds her way to Jake’s side.

And then he’s sent off to Florida. And then and then and then.

He gets stolen away from her side too many times to count (at first he tries numbering the days in Florida and then gives up after a few weeks, finding it too damn depressing to try and carry on). In Florida, his bed is too hot. Humid and muggy and toxic-smelling. He’s wanted a hot tub all his life but he can’t enjoy it in this heat and without Amy. He gets frosted tips and thinks, Amy would hate this so much, before promising himself that he’ll cut them the second he gets the hell out of Dodge, and the thought brings a smile to his face. He can practically _hear_ Amy reprimanding him when he drives an ATV for the first time (“Goodness knows you can barely drive a normal car, much less a literal death machine, Jake,”) and that’s enough for him to drive a few counties over and print out a picture of her that she’d sent to him over Instagram months ago from a printer in a Target. He pins it up to a wall in the little garage he’s renting, and he tries to stop himself from looking at it too much.

Eventually, he comes back, after a mess of cripplingly awkward moments and punches to the throat, and she cuts off the frosted tips herself. That night, when they collapse into bed, she whispers into his ear, “I hated that fucking hair so much but I was kind of okay with it for twenty-four hours because at least you were back,” and he half-laughs, but then she pulls herself closer and kisses the corner of his lips, and he knows, then, that she meant it.

“Thanks, Ames,” he says quietly and she hums against his mouth, laying her head on his chest.

“Too cold without you,” she mumbles into his t-shirt, wriggling her leg in between his.

He chuckles into her hair. “Too hot without you,” he mutters back, and she kicks at him with ice-cold feet.

“Warm me up, then, Peralta,” she murmurs seductively, and Jake laughs at how deeply exhausted she sounds. “Never mind, I want to sleep,” she instantly recants. “I just wanted to be funny.”

He presses a kiss against her hairline. “Good job, babe,” and he’s only 50% sarcastic.

When Jake moves into Amy’s apartment, it’s not much of a change; he was already staying almost every night there, half of his wardrobe (and like nine of his pairs of sneakers) was in her closet, all his favorite foods were in her kitchen (though to be fair, it’s not like there was much else there in the first place), and she’d started smuggling minor furniture pieces over anyways (she really liked one of the lamps by his bed, okay?), so the whole idea of cohabitation wasn’t exactly a shock, and when Amy writes move-in day on the calendar tacked by her door, he almost cries but pushes it back so he can gather her into his arms instead.

“I love you,” he whispers, and she buries her head in his neck and wraps her arms around his shoulders and murmurs it back to him, muffled against his neck, but he can feel the words on his skin.

The night after he moves in, Jake wakes up early to make her breakfast, fried eggs on toast with a veritable mountain of cheese on top. While he cooks, humming a gentle classical tune (she’d gotten him into orchestral music, somehow, but he didn’t mind it when the violins got stuck in his head), he hears the soft padding of bare feet on her _(their!)_ kitchen floor, and he turns, setting the pan back down on the stovetop and grinning.

“Hey, Ames,” he murmurs. Outside, it’s raining, and the storm casts a silvery-gray morning light into the room that makes her look almost ethereal. Jake is breathless, at 7:37 in the morning, standing in the kitchen they share now.

She comes a little closer, and he can see now that she’s wearing one of his tees and very little else. “It was cold,” she says drowsily, folding herself into his arms and tilting her head up to kiss the side of his neck (as high as she can reach without going up onto her tiptoes, he knows, now).

“Sorry.” He rests his chin on the top of her head, running fingers up and down her bare arms. “I made you breakfast,” he says, gently disentangling from her and turning around to check on the eggs.

Amy sighs and winds her arms around his neck and shoulders, relaxing against his back and leaning on him. “Make sure you don’t burn it,” she tells him groggily, and he chuckles, and she can feel the rumble with her face pressed in between his shoulder blades.

“You’re one to talk,” he returns playfully, tossing the eggs on top of the toast and sprinkling some cheese on top. “See? Call me Charles Boyle, ‘cause I can cook like a goddamn _madman,_ Ames.”

She rolls her eyes and loosens her grip on him to take the proffered plate. “It’s too early to talk about Boyle, babe,” she mutters, and he grimaces in agreement and plants another clumsy kiss on her nose before hopping up onto the counter to eat breakfast.

Such are their mornings.

(They’ve talked about marriage before, but as a thing far off in the future, not as a possibility on the horizon. Jake doesn’t want to be the one to bring it up again, but he thinks about it that morning as they talk over eggs and listen to the storm raging outside their apartment. He thinks about it again a couple months later when he’s in bed with her, pressed together shoulder to hip to toes, and he watches her do the crossword in his periphery until she gasps so loud he thinks she must be in pain, and then she says with all the justified anger in the world, “There’s a _typo_ in this crossword puzzle!” And at that point, it’s beyond thinking, it’s just knowing. He _knows.)_

Until, again, their life gets torn apart.

Jake can’t look her in the eye when he gets sentenced because he doesn’t want to know-- not about the grief or the pain or the fact that she’s going to rip up her life calendar when he goes-- and he can’t see anything or anyone anyway, can only hear the gavel, can only feel himself dropping back down to his too-hard wooden chair. _It’s not the kind of thing you come to terms with,_ he thinks as if from very, very far away. _It’s not the kind of thing you can accept._

His world is _here_. His world is New York. His home is the Nine-Nine. His world is _Amy_ , as cheesy and awful as it might sound, and he doesn’t know if he can handle leaving his world behind again. 

He pleaded innocent and pleaded innocent and pleaded innocent and he lived and breathed and fought and fought and fought this _fucking_ case for weeks, and now it ends with him bidding a quiet, shaken goodbye to everyone he knows and being shipped down to a high-security prison down in South Carolina, and _this is it,_ there’s no more fighting he can do.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” Jake whispers to Amy, but his voice cracks on _wait_ and she looks at him with shattered eyes that he doesn’t want to see.

“Of course I’m going to fucking wait for you,” she hisses back, voice choked and raw, her hands tightening around his. “Did you think I would actually---? Of course I’m going to.”

“Okay,” he murmurs, and closes his eyes. After a long moment of bated breath and silence: “I love you.”

They crumple against each other, and he can’t let himself cry, but he can feel cold dampness against his neck when Amy folds into him, holding him tight. “I love you too-- Jake, I love you so much, and I swear I’m going to get you out of there, okay? Fifteen months, fifteen weeks, hell, fifteen days-- it won’t be fifteen years. I swear on my life, okay? My life.”

“Okay,” he says again, and then he’s pulled away. It’s almost like deja vu, a scene Jake’s watched so many times from the other side, but now it’s _here_ and it’s _him_ and it takes all his logic, all his strength, all his restraint to stop himself from fighting back, from hauling off and punching one of the guys leading him out of the building, from trying to get out of this way he’s gotten out of everything, fast-talking and action and force. Instead, he closes his eyes and doesn’t look, doesn’t listen, doesn’t feel, just lets it happen, and a weight settles in the pit of his stomach.

The weight doesn’t leave for a while.

He forgets how to breathe in prison. He forgets how to talk. He forgets how to feel things the right way. Mostly, he lies in the too-cold bed (Amy was always cold, maybe, but he warmed her up, and their bed was warm), moving only when he has to or to exercise (he doesn’t want this place to change him; he wants to get out and for Amy to recognize the man he is, the man he always was). Mostly, he waits.

The weight lifts only when Amy has her fingers intertwined with his on the drive back and refuses to let go. Jake can feel her nails digging into his palm, but he can’t bring himself to care; it’s a relief to feel even pain, now. He folds himself into her side and she pulls an arm around him, holding him tight to her, and, softly, so no one else will hear or know, he cries into her hair and she lets him.

He’ll be okay.

(Jake thinks of the ring box shoved into a pair of his mustiest, dirtiest socks in the back of his underwear drawer, which isn’t a very romantic image, but he remembers its shining silver, the gleam of its precious stones, and he imagines slipping it onto Amy’s fingers.)

He squeezes her hand tighter.

iv. Being engaged to Amy Santiago is Jake’s absolute favorite thing in the world.

 _(Die Hard_ isn’t even on the table anymore, ever since “talking with Amy Santiago” “being around Amy Santiago” “working cases with Amy Santiago” and “sex with Amy Santiago” made it onto his top five favorite things list, and now with being engaged? The best cop movie ever made doesn’t even come _close.)_

That night, they almost fall asleep in Shaw’s, having withdrawn from their coworkers into a booth a few minutes after all their drinks came, mostly just to talk and drink like the world was ending (or maybe beginning) and make out in a corner. It would probably be obnoxious if they weren’t newly engaged, but they are, so Rosa, Gina, Terry, and Holt unanimously and individually decide not to give them shit for it. Charles, on the other hand, goes the complete opposite direction, pulls out his phone, and starts filming. Luckily for Jake and Amy, Rosa takes it upon herself to grab Charles’ phone out of his hands, toss it to the ground, and stomps on it.

“Rosa!” Charles yelps, leaping back.

She grimaces and pulls a one hundred dollar bill from her purse. “Get yourself a new phone. Preferably one without a camera.”

He shrugs and pockets the cash. “That’s fair.”

They end up getting kicked out of the bar three drinks later for public indecency (by Terry, who was really just doing the world a favor).

“Public indecency,” Amy grumbles, shoving her hands into Jake’s back pockets, pressing herself against his front, head to toe. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Idly, she trails her lips in a hot path down his neck to his collarbone.

He shifts the lower half of his body away from her as subtly as he can, peppering kisses over her face as he talks. “No idea, babe,” he mumbles against her lips, and he can feel her mouth curling up.

In a moment of lucidity, she pulls back a little, fingers going to her ring. “We’re getting married,” she says softly, and even with only the dim light of a streetlight several yards away, the wonder and happiness in her eyes is enough to illuminate her whole face, the whole block, the whole damn city.

He grins, bright and wide enough to make his face hurt, and he’s sure he looks ridiculous, beaming down at this woman in the middle of an empty street waiting for a cab at two in the morning, but he can’t find it in him to care when he grabs her hand and presses a kiss to the knuckle with the engagement ring on it.

“We’re getting married,” Jake replies, just as soft, and kisses her gentle and wondering on the lips. She tastes like liquor, like coffee, like sweet Halloween candy, like the traces of the vanilla-scented chapstick she puts on every morning and he kisses off every night like clockwork, like _him_ , somehow, and he wants her so much in every possible way it almost hurts.

The cab pulls up to the curb and they get in.

They wake up the next morning only when sun streams in through half-closed windows, tangled up in each other, skin to skin.

“‘Morning,” he mumbles against her bare skin, moving his lips languidly along the column of her neck, pressing hot, sweet kisses against her throat. She hums from somewhere in her chest and twists, reaching an arm around to pull him even closer.

Her voice is scratchy from sleep and the noise of last night. “Good morning, Jake.” She wriggles around so she’s lying on her side, facing him, and cups his face in her hands.

Even after years of being together, his heart stutters at the love in her deep brown eyes, at the golden early-morning sun reflecting off her dark hair. She glows, in this moment and every moment, and it has never once failed to take his breath away, even when he was convinced he didn’t love her.

Her eyes scan over his face like she’s trying to take in every faint freckle, every pale scar, every tiny wrinkle, every single detail of this moment. The engagement ring is cold against his cheek, and he almost moves to cover her hand with his, but he stays perfectly still; this is important.

Finally, Amy makes a quiet, satisfied noise and pulls him to her, pressing lips dry from sleep against his. “Don’t want to forget,” she murmurs against Jake’s cheek, and he holds onto her tighter, running hands up and down her spine, her ribs, her chest, her hips, and he finds that he knows every single line.

“We won’t,” he breathes back, and kisses her again.

They get into work a little late that morning-- Jake has never wished more for a day off in his life, and that’s saying something-- but luckily Holt just gives them a stern, exhausted stare, and says, “Don’t expect more lenient treatment just because you are betrothed to Santiago, Peralta.”

Jake snickers. “Betrothed, Captain? Really? _That’s not even a real word.”_

Amy groans and flops down at her desk. “How am I engaged to you?”

“I don’t know,” he says cheerfully, planting a sloppy kiss on her forehead as he passes. “But I’m glad it happened!”

She fondly rolls her eyes and ducks her head so he can’t see her blush ever so slightly, but he knows. He always knows these kinds of things; she can’t hide her smile from him anymore, and he can’t either. Like it or not, they’re each other’s realities now, each tiny facial expression just as much a part of the other as it is part of themselves. It’s a quiet realization, the kind that lived inside Jake for a while and only just now situated itself right in front of his face. He smiles at his fiancée _(fiancée!)_ upon realizing it, cheesy as it is, and laughs at himself a little just for being the way he is.

Holt sighs and disappears back into his office, rubbing his temples.

At any rate, it’s far easier to be engaged than it is to be planning for a wedding, which unfortunately comes with the territory. Jake is disorganized by nature, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and that was okay until he was an adult, and then it became jeopardizing to relationships, housing situations, and health. When it comes down to it, Amy didn’t make him a project when they started dating, which is probably one of the key reasons they worked-- she just coaxed him to be better at being a functioning human. She’s the poster child for what an actual adult is supposed to be, and it’s hard to be around someone like that without taking on some of their qualities, so at least now he puts away his clothes and cleans the house and washes dishes and generally keeps things a preliminary level of nice so Amy can elevate them to a non-preliminary level of dope (incidentally Jake’s highest degree of compliment).

(He’s gotten Amy to chill out only to some minuscule degree, but all of it’s okay-- they love each other for, with, and because of their flaws. He loves that she can bodily move half of a police precinct across the country in less than a day by the force of pure high-strung energy, and she loves that he can take down an entire crime family in a matter of months while being an absolute mess in every sense of the word. It _works.)_

They live in a near-constant state of disaster.

Hell, they _thrive_ in a near-constant state of disaster.

v. Being married to Amy Santiago is-- Jake doesn’t even have the _words_ for it.

He stands under the arch just in front of Holt and he can’t so much as breathe watching Amy at the other end of the aisle, radiant in a borrowed dress and a bouquet of flowers and the brightest, most genuine smile he’s ever seen in his life. He can’t even think-- everything his world could’ve ever been is tunneled down to this woman, now standing across from him with dark eyes shining bright.

Their disaster wedding is exactly that: a disaster. But it’s the best fucking disaster Jake has been a part of.

(Which is saying something when you consider how long he’s been with the Nine-Nine.)

It’s absolutely beautiful: the string lights casting a warm, golden glow over the crowd. The small circle of friends beaming up at them. Shredded paper strewn over the ground. New York City rushing by in his periphery. The glint of matching rings. Their captain presiding over the ceremony.

And, of course, Amy.

He could marry her in the dumpster where she first jokingly proposed to him and be happy. He could marry her in the mess of his teenage bedroom and be happy. He could marry her in the smoking wreckage of his old car and be happy. None of it would matter because it’s Amy Santiago, also known as, objectively speaking, the most perfect woman ever (and honestly, is it really any surprise that every man who’s ever been with her in any notable romantic capacity has become irreversibly obsessed with her?) and getting to marry her is the fulfillment of every wish he’s ever made (and even some of the ones he hasn’t).

The wedding is a blur and at the same time is the clearest thing he’s experienced. He knows every word of each of their vows, but the details are smudged at the edges, any internal camera he might have focused, always, on her.

They kiss, finally, and it’s inarguably the best kiss he’s ever had in his life (all the competition were his other kisses with Amy, though. Still, this one wins by a mile). Jake, as generally goofy and sentimental as he can be, never really believed in true love-- it’s hard to, when you’ve seen your mom lying on the couch looking like all the life has been drained out of her as a moving van rumbles out of your gravelly driveway, and you’re standing there with a bowl of rapidly-cooling mac and cheese in the middle of your kitchen and you can’t bring yourself to move-- but with Amy Santiago (or Santiago-Peralta, or Peralta-Santiago, depending on how you wanted to look at it), he can, and he does, maybe, with her mouth firm and soft against his, and her hands cradling his face, and her wedding dress swishing around his scuffed once-fancy shoes, and the cheering of most of the people he’s loved in his life cheering around him.

That night, they hold a semi-reception at Shaw’s, and by the time they actually get home they’re too exhausted to even have explosive _we-just-got-married!_ sex, collapsing into their shared bed and twisting around each other, even half-asleep, only bothering to cast off their wedding garb before shoving themselves under the covers. Jake wraps his arms around her, tight, and presses a clumsy kiss to her forehead.

“Goodnight, wife,” he mumbles against her skin, and he can feel the curl of her lips against his clavicle. “Sorry we didn’t have legendary post-wedding sex.”

She tilts her head back to meet his eyes even as they slip shut. “Don’t worry about it, husband. You’ll make it up to me in the morning.”

He laughs and swoops down to plant a long, solid kiss on her lips. “Oh, I absolutely will,” he half-growls, and she giggles, almost delirious with exhaustion, and winds her arms around his neck and tucks her head under his chin.

“You’d _better.”_

(He does. One hundred percent. Full Peralta-Santiago style. It’s an almost comically long time before they leave their bed that day.)

Being married to Amy Santiago is-- everything he wanted.

He was always going to be her partner; it was his destiny the second she stepped through the elevator doors onto the fourth floor of the Nine-Nine and said, _Oh, hi, I’m starting today. Detective Santiago,_ and he’d shaken her hand (irregularly strong grip, naturally); it was his destiny ever since they absolutely crashed and burned during their first case together, him crashing a car and her scaling a wall; it was his destiny since the first time he watched her curl her fingers around a gun and the first time he tried to eat her awful cooking at a staff party and the first time she embarrassed herself in front of a superior officer and the first time she laughed at one of his jokes; it was his destiny ever since they worked together, really worked together, for the first time; it was his destiny ever since he showed up at her doorstep with outstretched keys and a just-too-vulnerable heart. He was always going to be her partner, in more ways than the one. It was coded, he thinks, in his DNA. It runs through his bloodstream. It lives in the marrow of his bones. It burrows under his skin. It’s in every action he’s ever taken, every word he’s ever spoken.

Even if it wasn’t predestined, it’s the destiny Jake _chose_.

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you. thank you so much for reading this. stay tuned for part two, and leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed! my tumblr is chaosssy if you're interested :)


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